Morag Caister, a London-based British artist who graduated from the University of Brighton in 2019 with a BA in painting, creates work that affectionately encompasses the human experience.
Caister’s work is currently being shown in esteemed exhibitions, such as the National Portrait Gallery, within the Herbert Smith Freehills Portrait Award, a prestigious competition highlighting the very best of contemporary portrait painting. Caister’s work can also be found and purchased in our current exhibition, Embraced: A Lived Experience, and we are delighted to be hosting her RHODES debut solo exhibition this coming September.
Morag Caister's work at The National Portrait Gallery,
for the Herbert Smith Freehills Portrait Award.
Since her youth, Caister has had an interest in painting, specifically portraiture, due to her consistent fascination with people and "how they are behind their minds." She uses her work as a method to better understand the people around her and herself, since she says, "I am not so good at expressing things with words, but I still have things I want to say."
To truly understand her subjects, Caister paints with the aid of intimate live sittings, during which conversation is encouraged, allowing her to fully integrate her models' lives and experiences into each depiction. Her paintings often reflect this openness in their exploration of the contemporary portrait and the nude, with her use of fragmented colour and composition lending an ethereal and nurtured air to her works.
Morag Caister, Jonathan & Athena, 2024
Oil on Okawara Paper, Framed in Wood, 100 x 185 cm
Although Caister often leaves negative space in her paintings, the overall effect feels completely fulfilled, drawing the audience in closer to inspect her delicate decisions. This use of negative space grants her unique brushstrokes space to be seen and appreciated, while also making her figures seem as if they could be floating in some dreamlike space.
The humanity of her work and its subjects is emphasised by her use of colour, intentionally encouraging feelings of closeness and humanity. Caister’s palettes stay mostly within the realms of reality, favouring warmer-toned colours, creating an inviting effect.
Caister also utilises the compositions of her figures to reflect this same openness to exploration of the human condition. Her figures are often depicted lounging, draped over a sofa or bed, at ease and relaxed. Many of her figures are also depicted with a vacant expression, calmly allowing the onlooker to take them in and observe them. Her composition reflects the tenderness of her work and the people it depicts.
Her choices around colour and composition collectively create beautiful and intricate narratives that spell out the secret stories of her subjects. Cumulatively, her paintings present the cyclical nature of the human experience, showing how, as individuals, we are so complex and yet so interconnected.
Morag Caister, Rowena, 2024
Oil on Okawara Paper, Framed in Wood, 100 x 140 cm
As her work matures, Caister has become more comfortable creating work that could be deemed explicit, choosing to depict more and more nudes, which she creates from a "sexless perspective." An example of one such nude can be seen in her entry for the Herbert Smith Freehills Portrait competition, with her painting "Late for School with Things on My Mind." The depiction of nudity within this portrait is understated and intimate, allowing us as the audience to be even more familiar with the subject, getting to know them on the deepest level without infringing on their privacy or autonomy. In this painting, it is also evident that, for Caister, the backgrounds of her works hold importance, granting them almost the same level of attention and detail as she does to her foregrounds.
For more information on Morag Caister's works, or to register your interest in adding her work to your collection, email info@rhodescontemporaryart.com
